Supreme Court: Woman, her car, home subject to anytime search for guns

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday said an Ellsworth woman, her car and her home could rightly be subject to search for guns any time by any law enforcement officer, even without cause or suspicion, as a condition of her extended supervision sentence for battery to an officer.

"We hold that while the condition that the circuit court imposed on Rowan's extended supervision 'may impinge on constitutional rights,' it does not violate them," wrote Justice N. Patrick Crooks for the unanimous court.

The court got the case in July after the Court of Appeals certified it as "a novel issue of statewide importance that is certain to recur."

Tally Ann Rowan, 36, of Ellsworth crashed her car while intoxicated in 2008, then threatened to shoot emergency workers who arrived at the scene to help her and to kill a police officer’s family. At the hospital, she grabbed and injured a police officer’s thumb as he tried to restrain her so she could be medicated.

She had a handgun and ammunition in her car and also was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon.

Rowan was convicted at trial of battery to a law enforcement officer and sentenced to 14 months incarceration plus three years of extended supervision.

The Supreme Court found that Pierce County Circuit Judge James Duvall had fashioned the condition to the particular facts of Rowan's case -- that she had been violent, explicitly threatened the lives of police, medical staff and their families, had access to guns, and had threatened a judge while in jail.

The court agreed that convicted felons on supervision, like prisoners, have a "severely diminished expectation of privacy," and that because suspicionless searches of prisoners have long been deemed constitutional, they are in Rowan's particular situation.

She had argued that the condition was far too broad and essentially eliminated her rights under the Fourth Amendment, rather than just restricted them.

But the court noted that the condition was limited to searches for guns, that the searches still had to be conducted in a reasonable manner, and that the condition lifted at the end of Rowan's three-year supervision.

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